Out with the old, IN with LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the world-wide leading professional network with an impressive and growing membership of 120 MILLION LinkedIn members. Members of LinkedIn are connected to professionals to network, exchange ideas, learn about job opportunities, and connect with other professionals with a broader network. This short video shares more about the purpose and role of LinkedIn as a professional social network.

Students Establishing Themselves as Upcoming Professionals

One great benefit of college students utilizing LinkedIn prior to graduation is establishing themselves as an expert and upcoming professional in their career field. Have you ever Googled yourself lately? If you have a LinkedIn profile, chances are your profile will come to the top of the page. In today’s competitive job market, students now more than ever need to start connecting with fellow peers, established business professionals, and join groups and organizations to expand their knowledge and learning experience. When considering using an ePortfolio as part of your course curriculum, consider the goal of such an assignment. Do you want students to be able to showcase their work in school as part of advertising themselves to gain the appeal of a potential employer? Are you giving students the opportunity to use an online portfolio system to prepare them for technology they will use in their schooling or career? Do you hope that students will one day share their ePortfolio with a potential employer? If you answered yes to any one of these questions, LinkedIn may be able to meet your short and long-term needs. Students also have a greater ability to control their privacy settings in most cases more so than a traditional ePortfolio. In most ePortfolio systems, students either have to make the entire portfolio public or private, regardless of the contents inside. Using a LinkedIn profile, students have a better ability to control who in their personal network and broader network can see their profile and the contents within it.

Staying In-Touch, Reaching Out, and Learning Beyond the Classroom

A traditional ePortfolio, regardless of the provider, gives students limited, if any, ability to connect and STAY connected with peers, professors, and professionals. According to the United States Department of Labor (2010), the average person won’t have the same job 4.1 years from the start date of employment. If the current trend for students is to complete a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 4-5 years, how will students be able to stay connected with professionals they may have shown their ePortfolio’s during their time in college? The benefit of a LinkedIn account is the address book that updates whenever a change is made to a user’s profile. This means the great reference your student made in a course taken their first year of college can be easily found, regardless of where or what job the contact has, by staying connected on LinkedIn. In addition, students can use communication and collaboration tools through LinkedIn to stay in touch with connections in their network and reach out to potential professional contacts in a broader network.

Another advantage for students is utilizing the LinkedIn network to reach out to communities, groups, and professionals to ask questions and share ideas to problem-solve or even brainstorm solutions. Using tools, such as Answers and Groups in addition to the detailed search engine, students now have the ability to ask questions and learn beyond the classroom by reaching out to their current network or even make new connections in a broader network of professionals. Indeed, we want students to maintain a professional demeanor while they are students and in some cases, this is a trait that has to be learned through mentoring or even trial and error. As an instructor, however, one has the ability to guide students in this new territory and provide an opportunity to showcase their work while in the classroom.

Linking an ePortfolio to LinkedIn

Still standing firm on using an ePortfolio site? You can AND still utilize LinkedIn. If your school uses a standardized ePortfolio site across all courses, one can still utilize that site and link in a LinkedIn profile. Each LinkedIn user has the ability to customize three links on their profile page. Often, users will link a website, blog, or personal website. As long as you have a world wide web address, a student could link their ePortfolio to their Profile page as a Website. LinkedIn has a customized “Portfolio” title as a display label for linking any ePortfolio site or students can customize a display label with a title that is personal to them, such as My Website or ePortfolio. Regardless, this feature may be a win-win solution for instructors who are looking to use a standard or traditional ePortfolio site but searching for opportunities for students to fully utilize networking opportunities to showcase their portfolio work with professionals in a broader network.

The best part of LinkedIn is that it is free and students have full control of what happens to their profile after graduation. I recommend utilizing LinkedIn at some level if you plan on using ePortfolios because students have endless opportunities to network with professionals, in addition to showcasing their work, while they are still in school.

References

United States Department of Labor. (2010, September 14). Employee Tenure in 2010. Retrieved from http://www.bls.gov/news.release/tenure.nr0.htm

 

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ePortfolio Practicum

Portfolios in higher education, based in theory or context, are historically part of course practicum across university degree programs. Instructors in countless higher education institutions have used a paper-based format of portfolios as an assessment tool to evaluate student performance. The new territory in the 21st century classrooms demands or expects migration from a paper-based portfolio to an electronic or ePortfolio across an increasing number of university programs. Similar to their paper-based counterpart, ePortfolios provide students and instructors a digital tool to demonstrate or assess skills, generalized outcomes, and student learning as it relates to the curricular outcomes of a particular course or department. In addition, ePortfolios also serve as a networking outlet for both students and instructors allowing engagement or demonstration of life-long skills, professional development, representing skills or achievements within a particular field.

ePortfolios are digital dynamic development spaces representing a consortium of your academic skills, professional experience, and expertise in a particular field on the web. Most commonly, we see classroom ePortfolios include a solid representation of one’s skills and achievements while in school, as well as a blog element. By highlighting key aspects of professional development, such as education, publications, service, awards, or even recommendations, one can not only establish a solid representation of school achievements but ascertain themselves as an active or aspiring professional in a particular field.  Creating a unique ePortfolio by juxtaposing school and professional achievements gives a well-rounded professional presence and can be catered by design to reflect the personality of the user.

ePortfolio Platforms

Companies providing ePortfolios are perpetually sprouting up in the United States and internationally. One can be overwhelmed with ePortfolios if a university does not offer a standard ePortfolio platform for integration in curricular practicum. Internationally, PebblePad is widely used in the United Kingdom and Australia and commonly referred to as a Personal Learning Network. While PebblePad hasn’t gained much ground on American universities, Mahara, an open-source ePortfolio is becoming increasingly popular with its integration with Moodle. FolioSpaces is a free ePorfolio powered by Mahara but is not considered “open-source.” Avenet eFolio offers content management system solutions to the public, profit, nonprofit, and government sectors, notably known for their student “eFolio” systems.

Companies that offer ePortfolios such as Chalk and Wire, TaskStream, Digication, FolioTek, Epsilen, LiveTex, RCampus, Symplicity, iWebFolio, eLumen, and Adobe offer ePortfolio authoring products that can be purchased. While the majority of these companies offer products and services for instructors and institutions of higher education, some also extend those services to individuals and businesses seeking ePorfolio networking and social media solutions. Each company that offers ePortfolio systems has its own unique advantages and should be researched by the prospective consumer to ensure that student learning needs are met and can be easily integrated into your course management system.

Blogs as ePortfolios

With the increase in Blogging among students and “bloggers” alike, some instructors are turning to blogs and customizing its features to build a unique ePortfolio. Most blogs, such as WordPress, Blogger, and TypePad offer free and premium services that offer users a customizable blog that can be used for education, personal, or business purposes. Next week, I will offer an overview of what makes a great ePortfolio blog but in general, students enjoy using this format because of the customization abilities, easy use, quick time updating capabilities, and familiarity of a “blog feeling.” To view a sample of a student ePorfolio using a blog, click here.

Social Meda as ePortfolios

If Facebook is the big gun of personal social networking, then LinkedIn would be the king of business social networking. As business professionals are increasingly utilizing LinkedIn to network on a social media platform, more students are using this outlet to interact and promote themselves versus a traditional “ePortfolio.” As the need for this particular social media increases among business professionals, more schools are personalizing ePortfolios using LinkedIn versus an ePortfolio system, such as “eFolio.” One of the clear advantages of using LinkedIn is it offers free and premium services. In addition, the networking advantages give endless opportunities for students to promote their school and future professional field achievements while they are still a student in school. This month, I will outline the benefits of using LinkedIn as a substitute for “ePortfolios” for students and professionals alike.

 

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